WIP and a finish

My new mantra is 'finish one wip quilt, then make a new, finish another wip, then start a new quilt'.  So far so good :)

This one was finished yesterday... My house quilt.  I've been loving each step of making it. The fussy cutting for the house centres, diving into the scrap bins to find fabrics.... It is going to a friend house hopefully this weekend and I think she will love it. It's warm, soft and very, very cute.

Staying true to my mantra I started another quilt inspirered by some quilts of Kathy Doherty. I bought the book Promise Of Joy and especially two quilts struck me. I thought combining them would be lots of fun.

I feel this is one of the pictures I shouldn't show just yet, but I can't help it. I've been cutting up black and white fabrics to make the background. I made some blocks and just laid them out on the floor without ironing. - still need to make some blending rows as you can see before I sew them all together.   I plan to make lots of Dresden flowers in my Amy Butler 'Cameo' fabrics and applique them to the background as giant color pops and then applique green stems to the flowers. I hoping it will look good.... Knock on wood  ;)

 

....and if nothing else this picture candidates to 'worst picture of the year' :)

I'm linking up to Lee's Wednesday WIP. and Fresh Sewing days

Peek-a-boo street

I finished my lovely peek-a-boo quilt. Well almost finished... I made two 'empty houses'. In one of them nobody is home... but in the other I will embroider a little special greeting on before giving the quilt to my sweet friend Michala, who has a rough period and need a good reason to cuddle up and just kick back a bit. Last year was generally a very rough year for her and to be honest this year has not started of any easier. She's not one to give up, but I'm a really strict friend and will tell her to take a bit care of herself now :)

 

The quilt ended up at approximately 55x68 inches which is perfect to cuddle in watching TV or reading a good book. I made the backing out of fleece scraps and with a cotton batting,. It's so soft and has enough weight to really push you back into your chair telling you to take a break from the business of life :) Despite the fussy cutting there are enough scraps in this quilt to qualify it as a true scrap quilt.  

 

My kids does not want me to give it away. I mean. they love Michala, but they say they need a spare one for when I wash their quilts. Seriously, I don't know what its is about Stephanie's patterns and my boys (and I'm not saying this just because Stephanie reads this - it is really true). By coincidence both boys have a quilt based on Stephanie's patterns (here and here)  (To be honest Jens' quilt is more inspired by the actual pattern because I was in such a hurry I laid it up completely wrong and only realised later... But one day I will make another quilt that actually looks as great as it was meant to. In the meantime Jens is totally oblivious to the fact and loves his quilt. It's just me who cringes when I see it.) I've made lots of other quilts in the mean time and yet THIS is the one they don't want to give away.

 

Anyway, I had a little basting party the other night - seriously - I know whats in each little house by now... I really, really adore this quilt. It started off as a fun project but it has really grown on me.

 

 

And today it was light enough for an outdoor picture even after work

 

 

And see this... As if the daylight photo wasn't enough for sore eyes, despite the Danish tundra it seems spring can't be held back much longer :)

 

Catching up + Major cuteness alert

Finally a little time for an update. Life continues to be busy both at home and at work. We've survived celebrated two birthdays in January, a weekend long basket tournament (with a gold medal and a very proud son as outcome) and to add to the general mess there has also been the flu (yes, the real nasty one that takes a week +) and some business travel. Everybody survived January though. Let's hope February goes easier.

I'm happy to report some progress on my 'lego' project. The house quilt made from Stephanie's pattern 'Peek-a-Boo Street'. Warning though. Major cuteness alert! I was making it for my nephew and started of in great style with cars... but it turned a bit more girly as I moved on and now I'm making evil plans to keep it myself. Here's the latest picture from Tuesday afternoon (the photo is a bit dark but the days are really getting lighter now, so hopefully not too many dull dark pictures for a while)

It still needs a blue/green thin scrappy border and then another dark grey polka dot border added, so it will end up quite big. Could you not envision this on my couch? I certainly could...


Here's a few of my favourite blocks. I used blue and green scraps and are loving the randomness of it.

Bloggers BOM
The BOM blocks suffered from negligence until last weekend in January, where I spent two consecutive days with my quilt group. I had planned to use a darker background but ended up deciding to use a light background and thus had to run off to the quilt shop to get more fabric in the middle of it. Here's a picture from when I was sewing the blocks together. It's finished now and i love how the blocks are 'flowing'. I still need to decide on AND do the borders.

Bee blocks
I fell a little behind on my bee blocks in January. Just barely managed to get the 3x6 stars to the post office 30 minutes before closing time on the very last day and my bee mates in Bee Europa has suffered for that ever since.

Here's the block for Amelie. I am not super happy how it tuned out honestly. The fun thing about this bee is that you're always forced outside your comfort zone, the bad thing is you're handling other peoples beloved fabric and making something is always a nerve wrecking affair because you can't start over in case you fail. In this case I wish I could start over. I think I could make it much better second time around.



I also made her a little bag using the same pattern and using some of my beloved Echino. In this bee I always add a little extra thing to their block either using the cut offs from the block or making something in similar fabrics from my an stash. For the past months I've resorted to my trustful easy bag pattern as the gift... It is so fast to make, easy to let it be inspired of the block and very, very useful.





January's block was for Christine. She asked for a wonky star. I made her bag in pinks and of course with a wonky star: